let's talk about saidaioujou

[Bananamatic]

so now that it's been out for a few years, what do you think about it?

is it shit or good? too hard or too easy? and why aren't you playing expert? is hibachi being a little girl absolutely haram? is inbachi beatable or not?

i think it's amazing despite being broken and the port being shit, maybe even more fun than ketsui

[system11]

I like it more now that I've escaped the clutches of the port. I will almost certainly never beat it given my skill level but it's not a frustrating game to die in - at least not now my lag is gone. I think the general quality of the backgrounds lets it down a bit, there's a lot of copypasta in there, and on the PCB at least the audio quality is among the worst I've heard.

Voted for the blue option though. There is too much. I seem to do better with Maria despite her blue-ness.

[CStarFlare]

I'm not a huge fan of playing DDP, but the port made SDOJ really unenjoyable. Might have been an OK game to play for a clear otherweise.

The 360 mode was fun; I don't care for hyper recharges and 1.5 built its system around them so it's basically a wasted mode to me.

It's also really uninteresting for me to watch being played for score. I'm not at the level where this would impact me, but I've never been a fan of raising the hyper stock limit to 10 - it makes for a lot of hoarding. The shit in stage 5 makes the first 15 minutes of the run seem worthless anyway.

EDIT: On the topic of Inbachi, has it ever been decided if Lionmanggg's clear was legit or not? Seems like the lag should have made it harder on the port, and I'd have expected a PCB clear by now if it were doable.

[Bananamatic]

the worst thing about the backgrounds is the enemies having the same color scheme, so you can barely see some of the ground enemies and if you're even hitting them, especially in stage 5

st3 midboss is another one, it's near impossible to see which turrets are alive and which are dead while it's shooting at you, so you basically have to go by getting used to it and if the extra bullets are appearing or not

EDIT: On the topic of Inbachi, has it ever been decided if Lionmanggg's clear was legit or not? Seems like the lag should have made it harder on the port, and I'd have expected a PCB clear by now if it were doable.

apparently he never listed it on his clear page or something so I doubt it, you'd probably need to be a human TAS to beat her on the laggy port with the gigantic hitbox on top of that
even the best players had doubts if she can be beaten

[chempop]

I gave it 4/5, not my favorite DDP game, but still damn good. Harder than average single loop cave games, so it’ll last me a while.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Compared to games by other companies it's a 5/5 but compared to other Cave games I don't know that I'd give it a solid 5. It needed more time in the oven to keep tweaking it out. It was optimized around the red ship, should have taken time to be optimized around them all. And despite having cleared it I think it's a bit too hard for my tastes. 4.4/5.

I'm talking about the PCB only though.

[DestroyTheCore]

The scoring system lacks depth, as the only technique is to max out your Hyper level for the boat in Stage 3.
The hitbox is way too big and estimating its location is impossible unless you constantly stare at it.
Too many voices.
The futuristic/plastic aesthetic is unappealing.
Not enough lag makes even the simplest bullet patterns too hard (maybe it's due to the large hitbox).


I'm exaggerating, but I still enjoy the game.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think it has pretty great stage and pattern design. Both feel like they have the fundamentals of DOJ down but a bit harder. Not sure if I like it more than Doj or Ketsui in that department, but it definitely stands out.

Scoring system seems pretty good, but I'm too much of a scrub to seriously comment on that stuff.

I give it 4/5, though it'd probably be 5/5 if I was still a "I only plan danmaku" fanatic.

[Stompp]

I haven't had the pleasure to play the PCB version Only played the 360 port and I'm no aficionado, but I do enjoy the game. Tried the diff versions on and off but seem to prefer the 360 mode. The life counter works well IMHO and presents a different challenge than the normal 3 lives mode.

It is too blue though and I often find myself aiming blindly. Sometimes at stuff that isn't there

[Blinge]

Not enough lag makes even the simplest bullet patterns too hard (maybe it's due to the large hitbox).

say what?

[Squire Grooktook]

I think he meant "too much lag". The 360 port is horrific.

[RaidenViper]

It's one of my favorite DDP games. arcade version. The 360 port is just unplayable for me. dat lag...

[monouchi]

Need more time with the pcb.
Like it overall but not near the joy I get from DOJ.
Too much blue.

[dannnnn]

Great game, one of CAVE's best. I don't have a problem with the input lag on the port, I'm playing on a CRT through VGA and there's a very minor amount but it's perfectly playable. It's a real shame they didn't allow overflow scores in Score Attack mode though.

[pokemon123]

is the port really that bad? I am interested in SDOJ as it's the only CAVE game I have not gotten to play and getting the PCB is basically a dream for me.

[monouchi]

getting the PCB is basically a dream for me.

You are not alone in that dream as the pcb fetches around 320 000 Yen on Yahoo auctions.

[DestroyTheCore]

Not enough lag makes even the simplest bullet patterns too hard (maybe it's due to the large hitbox).

say what?

Sorry, that was not what I meant. I was trying to say that simple bullet patterns -- those not dense enough to cause significant lag -- are very fast and harder to dodge than they seem.

[Zaarock]

Voted 4/5. I think it's a solid game apart from the backgrounds, and input lag & slowdown problems in the 360 port.

I'm not a fan of how the slowdown works, at least on expert. Using the rapid shot causes a lot of slowdown, if there's a fair amount of bullets on screen then your ship actually moves slower over time when in shot rather than laser. If you switch into laser for a focused attack or scoring reasons while in the middle of a pattern it can be difficult to adapt to the speed change, because the bullets speed up and your movement speed slows down at the same time. Not a major thing but it's really strange after being used to using laser shot for more precise dodging in cave STG.

[system11]

Yeah that's pretty typical of their later games, slowdown is very unpredictable should you stop/change firing because the engine is totally overloaded.

[Satan]

4/5 I love it, it's one of my most played Xbox games - I'm not a 1CC player by any means, I can get to stage 3 on one life or so but I'm really happy with it.

[Acid King]

I have the port and like it ok. Not my favorite but fun enough. How many frames of lag does the port actually have?

[Skykid]

I think it's great, most definitely cut from the DOJ cloth and that's automatically a step in the right direction.

There are two overarching issues present with SDOJ though:

The PCB has no lag, but it's broken by the overflow bug.

1.5 on the 360 is superior to the arcade game and would make the PCB altogether inferior... but the lag is amazingly bad. Like, no-playtesting-occurred bad.

So we have a great game in two incarnations both plagued by rather critical problems, which makes me a sad panda.

Hopefully at the next Cave milk there will be an improved lag-free 1.5 and that will resolve all problems.

[Giest118]

Guys.

The input lag is a totally legitimate part of the challenge that you need to work into your strategy.

Give in to the cognitive dissonance.

[Icarus]

There are two overarching issues present with SDOJ though:

The PCB has no lag, but it's broken by the overflow bug.

1.5 on the 360 is superior to the arcade game and would make the PCB altogether inferior... but the lag is amazingly bad. Like, no-playtesting-occurred bad.

I'd agree with you, but for two reasons:

1. The lag is nowhere near as bad as people are making out. I've spent a great many years playing on emulators with way more lag than SDOJ inherently has and had no problems at all.

2. The overflow bug is hard to do. Like Guwange counterstop difficult. I'd estimate there's probably at maximum only five people on this forum (and in the Western gaming community as a whole) who could do it, and only one of that five has actually done it. Calling a game bad because of a bug that in itself requires a great deal of execution to achieve is pretty silly in my opinion. In the Japanese community, yeah it's a big problem due to the higher percentage of skilled players who could do it, but around here, it's nothing a great majority of people should be concerned about.

Now if anything, the use of excessive graphical effects is a bigger problem, at least to me. The overuse of after-images when you use Laser is visually disruptive and makes it hard for me to track my ship's position.

The only other strike on the game for me is how the hyper system is largely ignored for the first two stages in Arcade Mode, and rapid recharging is technically an exploit that's rarely used. ver1.5 went some way to fixing this, but if anything, I prefer X360 Mode's flow and gameplay systems more than either of them.

[Erppo]

The problem is not the overflow but the system in general. The bug doesn't really alter the gameplay that much when there's nothing you can do in stages 1,2 and 4 in any case. What it does is making stage 3 worthless too. I suppose the strategy for stage 5 might be a bit different without it but not by much. The TLB also becomes pointless, which is a bit shame since it's such a great boss.

E: Also no way is it as hard as counterstopping Guwange.

[blackoak]

I almost really liked SDOJ. Owned the PCB at one point but it's not one I regret selling on. I liked the initial difficulty, but it felt like the later stage design forces the player to memorize enemy spawn locations and be ready to point blank. I realize the same can be said of many Cave games, including ones I really like, but this one was just a tad too much for me.

On top of that, I didn't like the boss patterns in general.

[1up]

I haven't been exposed to the PCB so the Xbox 360 version feels fine to me. It's my second favorite Dodonpachi game.

4/5

[Blinge]

Is ver1.5 on the 360 disk?

[Oniros]

Too much blue. Should have had more green instead. No, Galuda doesn't count.

[gray117]

Doesn't feel as brutal as older games. Still don't get on with it...

Perhaps it's just me but i really don't quite 'get' the hitbox like I do understand in other games - it seems to be larger and/or interact differently with bullet shapes/sizes than your typical cave game? Or is that just me?... I probably don't play it enough to really know what I'm talking about.

Lag is bearable on a crt but definitely seems worse than most games. Port was dirt cheap when i picked it up though so can't really complain... But would never recommend it over ketsui or doj, even if fidelity and difficulty are more approachable.